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Saturday, April 18, 2015

Freelance technology journalist Alex Cruickshank continues from here. "In keeping with last week's
theme of splitting the class into two parts, this week I continued with
'understanding' and 'programming' separately. But with a twist."

First I explained the basics of software development models. I touched on the development methods that I lampooned in a Friday Rant.
I explained that agile development is currently flavour of the month
and, in my opinion, the most sensible approach because it mirrors the
way programmers have always worked.Then I explained the concept of business requirements. Programmers
and business managers tend to think in very different ways. They
experience different commercial pressures on their time, have different
career paths and backgrounds, and often have different personality types
too. I tried to sum all this up into a sentence: "Programming is
logical, but business often isn't."It went over their heads. My error. What would these 8-10-year-old
rural children know of business culture? Right, time to teach them."I want you to split into groups of four. One of you is going to be
the business customer. Two of you will be programmers. The fourth person
will be the analyst, who talks to the business customer and the
programmers and helps them work together. I want the business customer
to describe the software they want (like a simple game) and then I want
the analyst to help the programmers create the game, and feed back to
the customer with any problems. Off you go."I gave them 15 minutes and walked around the class, helping out where
necessary. At the end of the allotted time I asked for feedback in turn
from the customers, the programmers and the analysts. I got some gems.Read more... Source: IDG Connect

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About Me

Hello, my name is Helge Scherlund and I am the Education Editor and Online Educator of this personal weblog and the founder of eLearning • Computer-Mediated Communication Center.
I have an education in the teaching adults and adult learning from Roskilde University, with Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Human Resource Development (HRD) as specially studied subjects. I am the author of several articles and publications about the use of decision support tools, e-learning and computer-mediated communication. I am a member of The Danish Mathematical Society (DMF), The Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics (DSTS) and an individual member of the European Mathematical Society (EMS). Note: Comments published here are purely my own and do not reflect those of my current or future employers or other organizations.